Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Behold the Canadians, Destroyers of Worlds
Avid Life Media is a Toronto-based company that makes millions on the sexual weakness of others. It runs three sites, Ashley Madison, Cougar Life and Established Men. The first two are for married people
that are looking to be matched up for affairs, the latter for young women who wish to be the mistress of a successful and well-heeled man.
Of course, this service is promised to be 100% safe and discreet.
Yesterday morning they were hacked and someone calling themselves “The Impact Team” is threatening to release the data of all 37 million of their customers unless ALM takes at least two of the sites down.
“Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails. The other websites may stay online.”
What seems to particularly irk The Impact Team is that ALM advertises that they will scrub your information from their servers for a $19 charge and doesn’t deliver.
“Full Delete netted ALM $1.7mm in revenue in 2014. It’s also a complete lie. Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed.”
Somebody’s been burned and probably has the legal bills to prove it.
It’s easy to say “Karma is a bear” (for lack of a more colorful euphemism), but in this increasingly web-based world our vulnerabilities are more than evident. Not even the unlimited resources of the federal government are able to keep prying eyes away from our personal data — and in some cases are they are actively trying to weaken the private sector’s ability to do it. (All in the name of national security, of course.)
I guess it’s just a matter of time before the great Ricochet hack, after which I’m made to take the Walk of Shame as an Outed Conservative.
Published in General
Frank is cute, especially when I roofied him( which I really did, sort of).
Well worth the reading though. The books are damn funny.
How many of the greatest minds in history published their rough, half-formed, half-completed thoughts during their lifetimes? Very, very few. They kept journals for that purpose. They only published finished works.
(Writing letters served as a middle ground. Intended for private consumption, yes, but smart letter-writers still kept them formal enough to avoid scandal in case of unauthorized publication.)
The propensity to publish unfinished ideas is almost entirely an innovation of the Internet (and it’s immediate predecessors like USENET and bulletin board systems).
Doc,
I forgot that you like people with less facial hair than you. Are roofies part of the conciurge medicine I hear about?
They could have been merely concerned about their own PR image. That’s more of an amoral consideration.
I know… that’s part of what makes it fun.
How does Midge know that web site is not for cheaters?
Getting calls from frantic spouses that screwed up big time is something I get which isn’t too much fun at all.
Nah on Frank, he busted his ankle up when he was gambling so I drugged him a bit so he could make the Rico meeting. That is the truth. Then there’s the ad he answered for Cougar Life we should be discussing.
Another thought in response to this epigram: I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, but if you want to guess who the political leaders of tomorrow are, find out which students currently have the smallest online footprint.
They’re the ones who are thinking ahead. I don’t believe that the fact they have the discipline to refrain from publishing is evidence of either fear or of weak minds. It’s merely evidence of political prudence and forethought.
Yeah. So also with SCOTUS ambitions-
Doc,
Why do they call you? Is it for moral support or do they think there is some treatment?
The only people who like to hear secrets are those who don’t keep them. It must be a royal pain to hear this stuff. It is sad when people lose so much to get so little. BTW, thanks for being there for them.
Well, really, nearly every dating site is unofficially for cheaters. Allegedly, the majority of users on nearly all the top sites are already in relationships. The only thing different about AshleyMadison is that they’re up front about it.
I’ve also read that a surprising proportion of AM’s users are not actually in relationships, and that the “cheater-to-unattached” ratio at AM isn’t that much different from the industry average.
One could argue that AM is being targeted (and by extension other sites are not being targeted) simply because of their marketing, and not because of how the sites actually function in practice.
Disclaimer: I have no data to back up these claims.
Which goes to show why politicians are so half-baked. Online conversations are really helpful for developing intelligent and consistent thoughts.
This is my new defense for the rarity of my posting around here. I’m going to run for office. I’m not lazy, I’m just unwilling to put unfinished ideas on the Internet!
(This is actually pretty close to the truth, I sat on that Raptors and Sheep post for 4 months trying to finalize my thoughts on it, and only put it up because something happened that made it relevant, and I felt like I was stringing Augustine along…)
“Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.” – Elizabeth I
John Addams is a hero of mine, at least in his youth. (In his dotage, his son was actually much better.) And it’s not so much the being first in line as the not being considered a bigger threat to the coming evil than others.
I can verify he is a real doctor. I had no pain in that ankle until I had to remove the tape he used to stabilize it. Could never quite duplicate that method of taping it still.
a) Conversations published online can be helpful for achieving this purpose, but are not necessarily so.
b) Conversations published online are not the only intellectual venue for achieving this purpose. Great thinkers throughout history managed to do without publishing their conversations online.
c) Many, if not most, of the metaphors used to explain digital activity serve to obscure the actual nature of said activity. Referring to online publishing as mere “conversation” is a very good example of this phenomenon.
d) Freedom of speech and freedom of the press may be included in the same constitutional amendment, but they are still different phenomena. Speech is ephemeral. The press is more permanent. One is free to engage in both, but the consequences are often different.
They call me for various reasons. STD fears being up there as a concern. Not fun for me at all.
Frank,
Is “taping” an euphemism? What really happened in Vegas? I heard you fell hard and a big strong man helped you. Is this essentially what occurred?
This is why I have a split emotion between the schadenfreude, the respect for the hackers, and my hatred of blackmail. Note that the hackers are blackmailing the company, not the Johns, who are being hit in the backblast. Yet, never have such people more deserved the backblast (let alone the target of the blackmail) -hence, schadenfreude. And after the leaks from the IRS and expected storm coming post-gay-marriage, when the time comes to throw down on each other, this is the kind of thing we will have to be able to do -hence respect. And yet I do not wish to see the day of throwing down come -hence, hatred.
Ancient Chinese secret
a) Sorta, kinda, but not really, maybe. It’s a very strange form of blackmail. “Comply with my demands or I’ll hurt these other people who clearly mean nothing to you.”
It’s like a spy movie cliche. “Go ahead and kill the girl. She means nothing to me.”
b) As the hackers have not released any data yet we can’t know for sure, but if they release the names and identifying information of all of AM’s former users, that does not mean that all their former users are cheaters who deserve to be exposed.
Not only is there the large number of single people who had AM accounts, but there is also the large number of people who created accounts and then never followed through.
If the hackers are indiscriminate in their datadump, there’s bound to be a metric whackload of false positives.
Doc,
What do you tell them? No need to go into too much detail but how does one guard against some bad diseases. The spouses find out months or years later so that is a lot of fear. Nothing puts a crimp in a marriage like an STD, I bet.
The most damaging information, according to an internet security firm that first reported the hack, is that members were asked to detail fetishes and/or special “needs” that supposedly their wives weren’t meeting or wouldn’t indulge in.
Placing a name and address to “Doc Reno” and something about wood chippers could be damaging if the wife didn’t know. Likewise to “Demi” and his hosiery fetish.
Ech.
Why does anyone think the Internet is secure? It is like writing in stone in the town square. There is no privacy. All your stuff can be hacked.
I think nearly every online dating profile can be used for nefarious purpose, regardless of the site or the content.
e.g. Imagine how embarrassing it could be to be identified publicly as a single guy on AM, with no fetishes or special needs, who is searching for a single woman for love and companionship. He’d be ridiculed for not understanding how the Internet works!
;-)
Because SWAT loves to play with their toys. Especially if the people they are terrorizing are innocent and unarmed. It makes them feel mighty.
If “You’re not cop, you’re little people!”
How many people lie and post pictures of other people on their profiles? How ethical are cheaters?